In the treatment of radioactive liquid wastes, it is advantageous to employ vaporizing techniques, since the radioactive contaminants of the liquid are in general non-volatile and can to a large measure be disposed of in the liquid concentrate remaining after the liquid is vaporized. Advantageously, vapor resulting from the evaporation operation is then condensed for disposal, e.g. in an indirect condenser or by being contacted with liquid.
One general technique of this type is shown, e.g., in U.S. Pat. No. 3,480,515.
Unfortunately, conventional evaporation techniques of this type are limited in effectiveness by the fact that radioactive droplets of small diameter from the liquid to be purified are unavoidably carried along with the vapor from the evaporation stage, and serve to impose what has heretofore been an irreducible minimum concentration of radioactivity in the final product distillate.